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OTHER COMMS IN THE HISTORYVERSE:
The only things that ever made sense to me were the dippers and Orion.
But, if all I had was booze, assorted natural drugs, the occasional orgy and a serious case of lead poisoning to keep me entertained, I would probably have some wicked pareidolia as well.
They had really clear skies with no light pollution too. Not many of us get to experience that nowadays.
The last time I had the chance to be out in real darkness it absolutely blew me away. I grew an entire new hatred for light pollution that night.
The Southern Cross is probably the clearest constellation there is. Draco also works, assuming you're thinking of a Chinese dragon.
The dippers are only called that in English. In Latin they were bears.
In english they're still part of the bears. We just highlight the bears' backs with the dippers. But the Romans also highlighted the 'dipper' by calling them the "Septentriones" (the seven plow oxen)
One crazy fact is a lot of civilizations dating back to 15000 years ago have called the constellations containing the big dipper and little dipper something bear related through thier own independent mythology. Although other animals have been used also such as elk, sheep, a horse, or a camel.
Centaurus I can kinda see, and Eridanus makes some sense.
The stars have shifted a bit since then, maybe it looked more like a goat then. This can actually be looked up but it's a step harder than trivial to do it on my phone so I gave up
I didn't find one for this constellation, but https://www.halcyonmaps.com/constellations-throughout-the-ages/ gives the general idea
I found that link too lol. In Stellarium software you can just punch in a date, time, and long/lat and see the whole sky as it was
You don't see it?
sigh you don't see it.
Its just a memorisation technique
obv the only things that mattered to the ancient greek were the tail and the spine up to the head. Everything else was right out.
Honestly, I'm disappointed that they stuck with relatively closely clustered stars for their constellations. I want constellations that contain anywhere from 2 adjacent stars representing the Trojan War to 46 stars spanning hemispheres representing a fluffy rabbit or something. Who says constellations can't overlap? Or even share stars? Get more creative, ancient Greeks. Think outside the box.
We forget what it was like to actually be able to see the billions of stars in the night sky. When the power goes out in large cities, some people call 911 to report strange lights in the sky.
Light pollution is a real problem.
